The premise of Orson Scott Card‘s Empire is that a Second Civil Warbreaks uot in the US in the near future. Sometimes it is described as an urban vs. rural war, but mostly it is a left vs right. The actual war explodes only around page 160 (out of 350) of the book, so first we learn a lot about the political situation and the various driving forces of the society and the main characters. The book concludes with a resolution of the war where one side seems to win. Or if you will, it provides the plans of moving from the era of Republic to the era of Empire, similar to Roman times or to the Star Wars saga.
I enjoyed and was engaged with many of Card’s books in the past in a good way. But with this book I was engaged in a bad way. I had to force myself to read it through. His admiration of all things military and his right wing politics made it really hard not to throw the book at the wall. Sure, I know very little of the former, while, based on his afterward, the author did extensive studies and met with many military personnel before and during writing this book. But his adulation went overboard in my opinion. Everything that is civilian was negative in this book, while everything military was adored here, even if it was on the “wrong” side of the fictional war.
Regarding the politics, Scott makes a few fable attempts to create the illusion of balanced view. He wrote that it could have been the right and not the left who provoked the civil war, but in his book it just happens to be the left. In the afterworld he explains his analysis of the balanced state of affairs of today that includes fanatics on both sides. I agree with that statement,but not with his assessment that fanatics took hold of both sides to the same extent. From where I sit the right keeps moving to the right. While the left keeps moving to the center and not to the far-left. It is also hard to argue with somebody who categorically states “the Left has control of all the institutions of cultural power and prestige” (page 344). He is using this false argument to balance the fact that at the time of writing “the right controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency.”
As I am not much of a video game player I will most likely not play the “Shadow Complex” for which this book was a prequel. Furthermore I doubt I will want to work through the forthcoming sequel to the book itself. The reasons, beside the politics of the book and its focus on military culture, include the usual problems of weak female characters in Card’s works. In addition this feels like a rushed work, with several logical problems, that he avoided in the past.